Happy Mail

 Yesterday  I received some 'happy mail' which was lovely.  A very generous blogging friend had offloaded  gifted me some of her snippets in the form of some die cut parcels.  I had recently seen a couple of cards using this die with a background of a stamped 'word cloud' and had thought that surely I could produce my own word cloud on the computer so I set to work and this simple background is what I came up with. Also, unlike a stamp, my cloud can be re-sized to suit. Incidentally, I've since discovered that there is software readily available which will do this easily but on the whole I'm quite happy with my results and I did enjoy 'tinkering' anyway.  After printing the background I used an oval die to cut a shape and luckily I had some DSP which toned with the colours in the die cuts which I'd been sent.  I was warned that there were some seriously tiny pieces in the envelope (the infill for the small bows in particular) and putting the group of parcels together was a bit of a challenge but I did manage not to lose any of the pieces. A fairly plain card but I did add a scattering of toning gems.

So, thanks to inspiration from blogging and the generosity of a friend (you know who you are), I've tried something different to keep my old brain working 🤣

Word Cloud - produced on the computer using Craft Artist
Parcel Die - from Gummiapan

Ladybird and a Touch of Mixed Media

 I have a card to share today which is the result of playing around with a few mixed media ideas on a tag. I started by sponging the tag with a little green ink and then dug out a few stamps, most of which came from a magazine give away probably at least a couple of years ago.  I partially stamped some numbers overlaid using a crackle stamp with a grey inkpad then used black ink for the dandelion seed heads.  The leaves were die cut from some scraps of green card and the ladybird cut twice - once in black and once in red then trimmed the red part to overlay.  Some gloss was added to the wings.  A small red bow and a die cut greeting and we have a clean and simple mixed media (sort of) card.

Crackle stamp - a very old wood mounted one
Numbers and dandelions - from a Phill Martin magazine kit
Leaves - from a Stampin' Up die set
Ladybird and Hello - dies by Gummiapan

Neurographic Art Card

 I promise I'm not aiming to bore you with my latest discovery but just wanted to share a card made using this form of art as a background.  I started with a piece of card left over from a recent experiment using spray starch and shaving foam and just doodled using dark brown with a touch of black pen.  This was then layered up with some toning yellow card and a base layer of black; adding a large sentiment and there you have it a quick card.  That is if you don't count the doodling time 😉😉. I think it was Paul Klee who recommended 'taking a line for a walk' and that's what this is I suppose - very relaxing exercise anyway.

 We must have had a sprinkling of rain overnight but it doesn't seem to have cooled things down much!!

Something Different

 Something different to share today - not a card but just a page from my sketchbook inspired by the talented SARN who introduced us to Neurographic Art in one of her recent posts.  There is a link in her post to a short YouTube video and you will find other videos if this takes your interest.  Finding it a bit too hot at the moment to do anything too strenuous and just hating the inactivity of just sitting I thought I'd give it a go and this is my very first effort - nothing brilliant but at least it kept me occupied for a while and was an enjoyable exercise.  I very much enjoy Zentangle and to my mind this art seems slightly less disciplined - what do you think?  Why not have a go if you are sitting in the shade with a glass of something cold but still feel the need to be doing something with your hands.

Sunflower Ted

 Looking through some of my stash I came across two identical images so I thought I'd take the opportunity of turning them into a card using the technique which seems to be called either 'lattice frame' or 'eclipse style lattice'.  The usual way seems to be putting slivers of foam tape on the back of the frame to lift it away from the background but this particular die has quite narrow 'bridges' so what I did was to cut one from the image and then another one in some white card so that I could adhere them both together before layering over the whole image.  I hope this makes sense - always difficult to explain some techniques 😉😉.  I stopped at the single layer because I was thinking of the postage if the card were to be thicker but I think maybe two layers of white frame under the frame image would probably be preferable visually.  As is often the case this one looks better for real than in the photo.  Finally backed the whole thing with a layer of grey and cut a piece of toning background paper to fit the card.  A birthday sentiment and that's it for today's card.  It still seems to be wall to wall sunshine in the South.

Images - from a pad by Lily of the Valley which I've had for some years
Lattice Frame - unbranded die
Sentiment - dies from Stampin' Up

Two Challenges

 Today's card has been made with two challenges in mind.  Firstly for the Snippets Playground where as usual we are encouraged to use up our snippets.  Apart from the card blank, everything else on this one came from my Snippet mountain, as you can see from this picture.

I trimmed a white snippet to be slightly smaller than the card and then used a selection of  snippets for the other components.  The dragonfly was cut from a snippet of glimmer card which had been coloured using alcohol inks.  After assembly this had a little bit of gilding flake added.  Some stencil work was done on the white background and the sentiment was cut from a sheet which I'd composed and printed using Word.

I'm also visiting the Allsorts Challenge with this one because their theme this time is **Birthdays or anything goes**.

Dies - dragonfly from Gummiapan, Circle motif from Stampin' Up (retired)
Sentiment Dies - from Stampin' Up and Crafts Too (presscut)
Stencil from Lavinia

Lost Windmill

 I wouldn't say this windmill was exactly lost but I did come across it when searching for something entirely different.  I do remember making some windmill cards early last year using items from a class in the post so I presume I didn't use all of the items sent.  Anyway I thought it would be good to make it up into a card rather than putting it back into 'storage' again 😉..  The dies are 'retired' so no longer available from Stampin' Up.